San Francisco questions police use of lethal force

Suzy Loftus, president of the police commission, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr and Bayview Station captain Raj Vaswani listen to comments from the crowd, listens to comments from the neighborhood as the San Francisco Police department hosts a town hall meeting, on Fri. December 4, 2015 to discuss the officer-involved shooting of 26-year-old Mario Woods in the Bayview neighborhood that sparked outrage nationwide after a video taken of the shooting was circulated on social media, in San Francisco, Calif.

As reports from around the country of police killings of men of color piled up over the past months — Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., New York and Chicago — San Francisco seemed somewhat immune to the mayhem. That has all changed with the shooting of Mario Woods on Dec. 2.

San Francisco has had more police killings in the past two and a half months than in the four years between 2009 and the end of 2012 when there were two, according to Berkeley School of Law Professor Franklin E. Zimring. San Francisco, (at 0.6) hardly registers among large U.S. cities ranked by police killings per 1 million population. Philadelphia tops that list with 8.43, followed by Phoenix (6.93); Los Angeles (5.69); Dallas (5.67); and Chicago (5.56). The police killings are no less disturbing however.

The police response that resulted in Woods’ death will be discussed at the San Francisco Police Commission meeting tonight when it considers Mayor Ed Lee’s request for more use of de-escalation techniques before resorting to lethal force in police confrontations. The commission will also reconsider allowing officers to use stun guns, a request previously denied.

Zimring doesn’t question how the police are armed. He questions the “shoot to kill” policy, a staple of U.S. policing, especially in confrontations between police and suspects brandishing a knife. Zimring, the author of the forthcoming book, “When Police Kill,” explains his view and results of his research in Insight.